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Awakening, Part 2

by Toni Daring

Author's Note - This is the continuation of a sequel to a story that isn't mine, and it uses characters and situations that I did not create. Halliday Dasker, the world of Halivarr, and the Havilarri people are the creation of Andrew "Aethan" French, author of a story titled "Treasure Freely Given", that I stumbled upon while searching for naughty "cabin boy / pirate" stories on the Internet. His captain, cruiser, crew and their mission are somewhat different. They appear here, somewhat altered to better suit my own tale, with his kind permission.

This is a work of fiction. The author does not endorse the biological uplifting of non-sapient animals for the purpose of engineering a new species to be sexual servitors of another, neither does he support actual piracy in outer space or elsewhere. These elements, where present, are there purely for the purposes of entertainment. Likewise, sexual acts in actual gunnery turrets are probably best avoided in real life.

* * *

Halivarr, I am told by those who have been there but mostly lived elsewhere, is a beautiful world of dramatic, rocky highlands carved through with lush, verdant valleys by streams that fall in gentle cascades to the blue coral beaches of warm, shallow seas. I had lived inland, and the settlement in which my parents lived and where I was raised was in a relatively unglamorous agricultural zone, nowhere near the resorts and pleasure-warrens around Halivarr Downport, which is the Halivarr most off-worlders seem to know of. Still, my home had been in a wide, fertile valley, and the sounds of free-running water and scents of green, growing things were commonplaces that I had not missed until my first starship voyage.

Those of you who have already read my account of that voyage, which was intended to see me safely to my enrollment as a cadet at the Scout Service Academy on Phojla but instead saw me kidnapped by (depending on who you ask) pirates or resistance-fighters, will already know that I'd had many distractions, too many for me to really miss such things. In fact, it was only when I found myself at ease with the smell of live plants and the sounds of flowing water around me that I knew I had been homesick for them. Doctor Courangara, whose quarters I was in, probably did know, and had asked me to see him there with that in mind. He's the sort who thinks of things like that.

Those who haven't read about my adventures so far might wish they had, but I'll explain just a bit for those who, for whatever reason, don't have access to those parts of my story in their databanks or can't resolve the texts on their flec-readers (as I am told some worlds limit access to the kind of story which that was, and which this one is going to turn into pretty quickly here). My name is Halliday Dasker, captain's mate on the renegade Starcruiser Gvadakoungg. Unlike its Vargyr captain and crew, I am Halivarri.

Like many but no means all sapient races in the known Galaxy, we Halivarri had been created long ago through genetic manipulation of non-sentient animal species by the agency called by Human theorists "the Ancients" and by Vargyr theologians "the Maker". Who or whatever was responsible chose to alter the reproductive instincts and function of the Halivarri, in what Humans tend to view as a perverse sociological experiment and some Vargyr regard as the Maker demonstrating Its favor toward another of its "uplifted" creations: the Vargyr. This is because one of the things that the Maker had done when altering our instincts, urges and forms was to make us Halivarri instinctually receptive to Vargyr dominance. But more about that later.

I was in Doctor Courangara's quarters to discuss my reactions to the rest of the "genetic imperative" that, being a healthy adolescent Halivarri male, I had begun to experience. And it is typical of my adventures over the few days I had been learning to handle this that I found myself in the position I was in. Namely, purring softly with my head resting against the Rakashah doctor's soft-furred chest where his silken dressing-gown left this bare, my legs asplay to straddle his own, my tail stroking slowly along his inner thighs and my bottom pressed snug against the unmistakable bulge of his silk-covered, Rakashah-sized maleness. Rakashah are large.

But I am getting ahead of myself. My experiences with my Captain and the crew were really unlike anything that I had ever done before, and my feelings about them were equally unfamiliar. Casting around for the right person to talk to about all this, the only one who seemed to make sense was the Rakashah doctor. He wasn't Vargyr and, aside from a single pat on my bottom, didn't seem as likely to pay me the sort of attention that was confusing me.

The reception bot at sick bay told me that Doctor Courangara was off duty, but after a moment said he would see me in his quarters, and told me where to find them. A short while later, I was presenting my wrist unit at his door. It whispered open. A scent of fresh soil and growing things met me, and with it the doctor's voice. "Come in, Dasker." I entered, and the door slid shut behind me.

Doctor Courangara's quarters hardly looked like a part of the starcruiser. The light was dim, the air warm and moist. A stand of bamboo half screened a pool at one end of the room, fed by a stream rattling down over a rock cascade. Green plants were set all around this oasis.

The doctor sat in a comform impervic chair, reading an actual print-on-paper book. A glowglobe hovered behind his right shoulder, and a decanter and glasses sat on a small table beside him. The doctor finished the passage he was reading, marked his place with a velvet ribbon, and set the book aside as he looked up.

"I am sorry to disturb you, doctor," I said somewhat diffidently. Although he had been nothing but kind to me (and indeed, that is why I was there just then) it was hard sometimes to get used to how big and fierce he looked. Rakashah are a race "lifted" from powerful apex-predator feline stock, and physically intimidating.

"Not at all, Dasker. Please join me." He gestured to the opposite chair. Off-duty, he wore neither his eyeglasses not a lab coat, but instead wore a dark silk robe embroidered with dragons, its cord tied neatly at his waist. He looked more like the ideas I'd had of the reclusive Rakashah I'd read about in school, legendary sybarites content to rule their Twelve Worlds and turn inward to the frontiers of the mind. "Would you care for a drink?"

I wouldn't have, especially, but courtsey made me say yes. He poured from the decanter, then passed it to me and indicated his waiting glass. I poured rather more for him till a subtle gesture of his massive paw bid me stop. He sipped and I did the same. I coughed and blinked back tears. The doctor smiled his wintery smile.

"Ouvereskan, triple-distilled, aged fifty standard years in a burnt zangarwood barrel." The doctor gave me a moment to collect myself. On second taste, the liquor was actually not too bad, though far stronger than anything we had on Halivarr. "Not to all tastes, but the Captain enjoys it, as do I. What can I do for you, Dasker?"

"Um, I don't know, really. It's... I'm just sort of confused." I fidgeted with my glass and bit my lip.

"Sip the liquor, Dasker. It is more efficient than simply inhaling the volatile fumes." The doctor gave another of his little smiles (but what did I know? Maybe they were big, open smiles for a Rakashah. On Halivarr they would have seemed small and wintery), and after a thoughtful moment, spoke. "Confusion is confusing. I will help you, if I can. Is this to do with your awakening, by any chance?" He leaned toward me slightly and the dragons on his robe shifted subtly. I thought I saw one breathe smoke.

Thus remided, I sipped my liquor, and replied. "Well, yes. You see, before the Captain..."

"There had been no one else. Yes, of course." He leaned back, sipped and explained. "Dasker, when you bonded to the Captain, that was like the sun turning north in the Spring - I believe your Halivarr has seasons, yes? Well, then - and what you experienced with him in the night following, that was like the first rain to come to a place where seeds have sat, in the dry darkness, quietly waiting. Do you see what I am saying, Dasker?"

I tried to follow. "Sort of, I think. It's my favorite season, when it feels the whole world is waking up and pleased to find it such a beautiful day. Everything is so..."

"Full of life?" offered the doctor.

"That is just it." I said. "But after bonding with the Captain, I had thought he would be..." I trailed off. I didn't know just what I had thought, before I'd met Orngg in the passage of B-deck.

"The flower opens because the sun shines, Dasker," said the doctor. "That does not mean that bees will not wish to drink its nectar."

At least one of his words registered, and I sipped my liquor as I puzzled the rest out.

"It may console you to know that the heightened awareness which you have begun to experience is a transitory condition," said the doctor. "In time, the tide will crest, and recede, and your responses will be heightened certainly, but less overwhelming."

I heard myself sigh with relief. "How long do you think it will be, doctor?"

"You are seventeen now? A late-ish onset for an Halivarri male. Still, I don't think this should go on for much more than another fifteen or twenty years." He smiled reassuringly.

"Twenty years?" I wasn't sure I had heard him correctly.

"Fifteen to twenty, as an estimate, yes." The doctor seemed to take it philosophically, but he wasn't the one it was happening to. "The initial adjustment may take days or weeks, Dasker. You have a full prescription of the best help medicine can provide. I have, at the Captain's insistance, examined you very closely and you are in excellent health. Your responses, however unusual they may seem, are perfectly natural for your age and species." He paused thoughtfully. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"Well," I thought, "Sometimes it makes my pants too tight, but I kind of like that, really." He offered another smile. "I guess I might feel better if I just understood why it's happening."

"Ah," said the doctor. "I understand. Let me see if I can explain in layman's terms. Vargr have a very complicated sense of smell. It is an important means of subverbal commication for them - yes, I know you know that already, but it is important." He shifted again, sitting forward as he explained, and I watched the dragons curl and crawl. "Your species happens to produce pheromones across the entire range of the Vargyr olfactorum, and well into the range of many other species, including my own."

I looked at the size of his paw resting of the arm of his chair, bit my lip, and nodded.

"Also, your physical form," the doctor continued, "superfically resembles the prey of those animals many other Made Races are descended from. This secondary consideration has been complicated first by sentience - I am not a predator, you are not prey - but in the second place your species has further been bred to exhibit a variety of traits that various other species find desireable in a mate, or instinctive to extend affection toward."

He smiled a bit, leaned forward, and elaborated: "Large, dark eyes, a small figure, soft fur, pleasing natural body aroma, prominent primary sex characteristics, a subconsciously communicative tail that happens to end right above a particularly dense occurance of scent glands - and a cute little bottom that begs for a pat." I blushed and stilled my tail where it squirrmed between my legs. "It would be difficult for the crewmen not to notice you."

"But when they do notice, and I notice them noticing, I..."

"Your breathing becomes more rapid and more shallow. You perspire - releasing pheromones. Your pupils dilate slightly, making you look receptive and vulnerable. Your fur fluffs a bit, your genitals engorge. Your tail is restless." I looked down, and saw the tip of my tail flicking from one knee to the other, and stilled it with a hand.

"So all the things they respond to only are more appealing on a second look?" I took another sip of liquor, and found it was beginning to make me feel nice and warm inside.

"Yes, you follow me exactly. But that only explains their response, not yours," said Doctor Courangara. "Your instincts, your reflexive responses, Dasker, are hedonotropic, pleasure-seeking. The chemical processes involved are fascinating but ultimately irrelevant to your inquiry. What we have in effect is a positive-positive feedback loop processing sensory input and reflex-motor output in patterns tending toward higher sensitivity in erogonomous function. Have I lost you?"

I had liked the bit about big eyes, soft fur better. "Not quite, doctor. I think I understood most of that." I went to take a sip of my drink but the glass was empty.

"Sorry, I'll try again." The doctor poured.

"Er..." I blinked.

"A joke, Dasker." The doctor smiled.

"I didn't know that you did that," I said, and took a sip.

"I do sometimes, Dasker." Alright - so the small, thin smile was not his only one. Doctor Courangara had very big teeth. But he also had a nice smile. Well, mostly nice. "I have a lazy habit of falling in to jargon, Daker, that I hope you can excuse. I am not surprised that you are feeling a little unsure of yourself. These feelings are natural to you, but new as well. Still, if understanding what is causing it will help, then I will do my best to educate you. But I am a scientist and a physician, not a teacher, and my Rakashah perspective might preclude a certain sensitivity on my part."

"Doctor Courangara, truly, you've done more than I could ask already. I didn't mean to take up your reading time and all..." I stood up.

"Not at all, Dasker, please. Finish your drink, at least." The doctor raised his head slightly and regarded me with warm, amber eyes. "You aren't disturbing me, Dasker. It is just that some things are very difficult to explain in words. Let me try another way." He rose.

As he unfolded from his chair, dark silk rustled and the many-colored dragons danced. His feet were silent as he stood, his broad shoulders spread back and a fine thatch of fur showed on a broad expanse of chest left uncovered by the vee of his robe, gathered by a tassled sash at his waist to drape a conspicous prominence just below. One massive paw gently scooped my drink from the table, and he handed it to me. I took it. He gestured with his paw, 'well?' I drank.

"Look about you, Dasker. I have few posessions. What can you divine of my nature - my species - from what you see here?" He paced silently behind me, one paw resting its weight on my shoulder, turning me as he spoke.

"You prefer few distractions." I was still a bit selfconscious of taking so much of his time.

"Close. I permit myself few distractions." He stood behind me, looking where I looked. "Go on."

"You are sensitive to quality. Aged liquor, silk robe, bound books, living things and water." I wondered where he was going with this.

"Very good. I permit myself few distractions but, at the same time I am a bit of a connoisseur." His low rumble of a voice held a bit of a chuckle. His paw curled a bit on my shoulder.

"You value solitude, your quarters aren't adjacent to a social area. You live alone." A few fur rugs and many cushions piled about them beyond the cane-grass screen was the only thing in the room that suggested a bed. The adjacent office was neat and utilitarian.

"Good boy, Dasker." the paw flexed again, kneading my shoulder pleasantly. "Even among Rakashah, I would den alone. We are somewhat territorial and prefer a certain distance." He stepped closer. His feet made no sound, but I could feel him closing the distance. "What else?"

"Your very organized and neat. You dislike disorder." I was fishing, now.

"Ah, you were doing so well." He stepped up beside me, leading me over to the oasis around the pool. "Is the cane-grass ordered?"

"It has its own order, I suppose." Folded between that weighty paw and his silk robe, I followed.

"Very true, and well observed. But the cushions aren't stacked, or sorted by color or size, are they? The plantings and cascade are meant to look ...natural."

"So, in some matters you like to organize yourself, but in others you prefer the order of nature?" I wondered if this was all going to be some oblique lesson in self-control.

"Just so." He walked past me, his hand slipping from my shoulder just in time to pat my bottom, and gracefully lounged amongst the cushions and furs. "Won't you make yourself comfortable, Dasker?" He looked comfortable in a way only cats can be, and I felt a strong urge to curl up in his lap.

His lap, broad haunches asplay under rustling silk where dragons writhed and curled with the rise and fall of his breathing, the swell of his loins shifting under the fabric as he stirred. I looked up from his lap, up his broad chest to meet his golden eyes. He smiled, held an arm out, open.

I went over and curled up in his lap, leaning against his left side, his paw curled around me. I tried to sort of perch on his left thigh, but the silk was slippery and my bottom slid down until it rested warmly against the prominence between his thighs, he breathed against my neck, and I purred.

"So, Dasker," the doctor spoke into my ear with a basso purr that made me shiver and squirm in his lap, bringing me out of a long, silent reverie with a blush as I felt his sex stir and swell beneath me. "We have discussed the manner in which your Halivarri, ah, ...gifts express themselves through the body, but we ought not to overlook the mind - Which brings us to the predilections of my own race." I shivered again, and Doctor Courangara laid a heavy paw on my hip to still me. "Tell me, Dasker, what do you know of my people? What tales are told of us on your Halivarr?"

What little I did know of Rakashah - another Made Race, in their case from a massive apex-predator species of carnivore-pouncer stock - I had learned mostly during my years in Guides, tales we swapped on nights spent in the high meadows under the stars, as we looked out on our Galaxy and all its myriad of worlds. Such nights had been magical to me, and had in their own way determined me to enroll in the Scout Survey and Courier Corps Academy. Those nights had also presaged other developments, and I blushed again as I found myself recalling those first fumbling explorations with other Halivarri boys. It took me a moment to recall I had been asked a question, and another to begin to answer it, but Doctor Courangara was patient.

"On Halivarr, it is told that the Rakashah were made by the Ancients to be an army for a war against their own kind. That in learning the purpose for which they had been Made, they turned on the Maker, and won. They say that if the Rakashah had not thereafter refused to engage in the Arts of War, they would have conquered known space. They say that in your chosen seclusion on your Twelve Worlds, you have mastered strange powers..."

Here I trailed off, as Doctor Courangara rumbled beneath me with a low chuckle, more felt than heard, which made my tail toss and squirm. "And where did you hear such tales, Dasker?" The doctor's voice was soft, intimate. "If you don't mind telling?" I smelled dry grasses, underscoring the scent of young Halivarri boys naked in the cool night breezes as the doctor's heavy paw flexed on my hip, stilling me when I shifted on his lap.

"Oh, in Guides... We always talked of the out-world things we'd heard of, and what we'd do when we were old enough..." Somehow my thoughts kept turning to what we had found we were already old enough to do together. Fires were dangerous in the high country when the grasses were dry, and we had found other ways to keep warm. The Rakashah's chest fur under my cheek was as soft as a Halivarri boy's thigh, but the scent was different. I found myself nestling close to explore that difference, as Doctor Courangara breathed his next question against my neck.

"And are those still the things you want to do, Dasker?" I shivered and shifted my seat, and this time the doctor didn't still me. "Yes..." I replied, blushing a bit as I realized he meant becoming a Scout, not how I had spent those nights in Guides, which is the question I had instinctively answered. I felt another rumbling chuckle and the rear seam of my shipman's pants slid across my quivering tail hole as the panel drew taut in front from my straining arousal. Beneath me, I felt Doctor Courangara's massive maleness swell a bit further. I bit my lip, imagining where this seemed to be heading.

"No, Dasker... at least not at this time," said the doctor, his heavy paw at my hip prolonging my squirm into a motion to meet a lazy arch of his hips that made me gasp. "Our bodies are sufficiently disparate in size that I will not pursue such activities, until I determine I can do so without risking injury to you." This was perfectly reasonable, but not what I wanted to hear. Only a heartbeat or two later did I realize the Rakashah had spoken to something I had thought, rather than said. "For now, it is sufficiently pleasurable for me to evoke fond memories. Yes, I feel the emotive content most distinctly. Fascinating."

"Er, how do you mean?" I asked. I wasn't sure how truthful the wilder accounts I'd head of Rakashah were, but some said that they could read minds, and more. I wondered how much of my wandering thoughts the doctor had been privy to, but decided I didn't much mind him knowing. It was a lot more embarrassing to know he knew what sitting in his lap was beginning to make me itch for. Just as I was about to curl up and expire from mixed mortification and raging desire, both feelings receded to the point where the soft sounds of the fountain and the green scents of the cane-grass and dwarf trees allowed me to gather some much needed tranquility.

"Your pardon, Dasker, for invading your privacy. I will admit my curiosity regarding your case got the better of me and, in spite of what you may have heard about my people, we are by no means mystical celibates untouched by desires of the flesh. But pleasures of the mind are far harder to resist. And your Halivarri mind is, I would have you know, signaling your instincts and impulses quite loudly, although I perceive this is involuntary, as well as occurring without your knowledge."

It took me some time to understand this, and I started to frame a question, but Doctor Courangara answered before I could quite find the words. "Yes, you broadcast your arousal on a subliminal level. To Vargyr, who communicate a great deal nonverbally in any case, this simply feels like their own excitement, heightening their response to the physical and chemical signals we discussed earlier and lowering their social inhibitions to a certain degree." I followed all of this well enough, but it raised other questions. Unnervingly, Doctor Courangara began to answer these before I could ask them.

"I know that much because I dispensed with the usual screening disciplines by which I maintain my own mental privacy so that I could experience the phenomenon directly. In so doing, I was affected to a greater degree than I had anticipated, hence the liberties which, under other circumstances, I should not have taken with a patient. But as matters stand, I was able to determine that you are also sensitive to erotically charged empathogens on a deep-brain level, in fact your psionic armamentarium seems to be largely medullar..."

I must have gone a bit slack-jawed attempting to follow all this, because Doctor Courangara apologized. "Your pardon, Dasker, I forget myself. What this means for you is that the function is instinctive and unconscious, and it is doubtful you could ever bring it under intentional, conscious direction."

Here he paused, and I looked up to see him looking at me with warm, amber eyes. Something of his detachment conveyed itself to me, and I was content to wait for him to continue. In spite of everything that had and had not happened, I was still inclined to trust him. After a long, thoughtful moment, he continued.

"Nor do I think that artificial shielding would be beneficial to your development at this stage. but neither will the anxiety you seem to be experiencing. Which reminds me," he said, looking away long enough to toggle a nearby screen to show an extremely technical readout that I could not make much of at all, "You seem hardly to have made use of the medication I dispensed for that. Just as well, perhaps. In light of what I now know, I think I might change the prescription, if you think it might help to be consciously aware of the psychic influences at play?" Heavy, padded fingertips, each showing just the tip of a retractile claw, caressed the interface as the doctor calculated the formula.

"Well, I suppose knowing is better than not knowing..." I offered. Truth be told, I had mostly avoided taking the microtablets that Doctor Courangara had offered me the previous morning because I was worried that they would impair my judgment, or otherwise interfere with the responses I was adjusting to. This, at least, sounded like it might help me have some control.

"Very well... but remember they do no good at all unless you take them, Dasker. I assure you, there are no untoward side-effects, and many benefits, so do not hesitate to use them. Your wrist unit, here, Dasker." I blushed, lifting my hand from where I had unconsciously been stroking the silk that covered one heavily muscled thigh, and placed my wrist on the console. I saw a number of tiny pink pills ejected into a receptacle, which sank out of sight as a separate tubule shot a number of equally small blue pills in to replace them. "There you go, Dasker. We will see how you do with those. Medical monitoring will dispense them when your status indicates they are needed."

I interpreted this to be an order to take the medicine when it was dispensed, and promised to do so. "And should I come back if..."

"Come back if you need anything Dasker - including company. Do not neglect your gymnasium exercises, nor your massage session. In the meantime, I will pursue my own research." He said this last with one of his wintery little smiles, as if it were a joke I were meant to get, as he lifted me bodily from his lap and set me on my feet.

"Research?" I asked, attempting to make myself fit less conspicuously in my shipman's pants, but mostly just sliding the slick, clinging fabric around.

"Regarding the capacity of your adolescent Halivarr anatomy, Dasker, to accommodate the... shall we say... proportionately larger endowment of a mature Rakashah male?" He gave a rather lingering pat to my bottom, and smiled in a way that made me blush and look elsewhere.

My eyes dropped, first to Doctor Courangara's massive, velvet paw at the console, then to the silk-shrouded prominence between his thighs as his paw moved down to smooth his robe in a way that made it plain just how big he was. A damasked dragon crawled its length as he breathed. My eyes found his again, and a shiver ran town my back to set my tail tossing between my thighs.

"Your wrist unit is blinking," said the doctor in a faintly amused tone. "Take your medication, Dasker. We will resume this discussion another time." I knew a dismissal when I heard one, so I licked my wrist unit where it was offering a blue pill and departed with this dissolving on my tongue.

* * *

I left Doctor Courangara's quarters, trying to adjust the fit of my uniform to be a bit less conspicuous, without much success. But then, it was beginning to dawn on me that the cut of a shipman's duty whites was meant to be revealing, though I didn't yet quite understand why. Since at least one of my readers has written back expressing some confusion from my earlier description, I think I should explain the uniform again, more carefully, so you can get a good picture in your mind. Otherwise, if you imagine me in a regular shirt and pants, a lot of this might not make sense.

The uniform issued to a crewman on the Starcruiser Gvadakoungg is two pieces, shirt and pants, both made of some thin, stretchy fabric that is nearly sheer, doesn't show dirt, and feels dry on the outside when it is damp - or even sticky, if you know what I mean - on the inside. The fabric breathes, meaning that body scent (which is important to Vargyr communication) is transmitted easily through it. So much for the material. What is harder to describe is the cut.

The shirt has short sleeves that just cover my shoulders to the top of my biceps, and the trunk of the shirt is cropped high on a line even with these so it comes down over my chest to end right above my nipples. And I mean right above: the rough-soft fabric of the rolled hem rubs across them when I move, or even breathe heavily - which I had been doing pretty often. So my primary nipples are mostly exposed, and generally excited into little pink nubs. My lower torso - including my two lower pairs of smaller nipples - is left bare to just below my waist, where my pants start.

The waist of the pants is like a thick belt, with a ring-shaped port in the back for my tail to pass through, which grips lightly right at its base. Below this, the pants are snug all the way down to the calf, where the flare a bit over ankle-high shipman's boots. The pants don't have a fly as such. Instead, the center part is attached by a row of shiny, bronzium fasteners down either side, fore and aft, so that this panel can be completely removed to leave my maleness and bottom exposed. The captain likes me like that, to see, smell, taste and touch as he pleases, so in quarters it's my regulation dress.

Even when it is in place, however, the center panel doesn't hide much when I have much to hide. In back, a carefully tailored seam runs tight along my cleft to rub against my ring. In front, it supports my sex with enough stretch so an erection isn't uncomfortable, but enough cling so that it is visible. Pretty much all I can do by adjusting myself is decide how this is displayed. Even at half-mast, as it were, the cut of the pants seems like it's designed to make my tackle look big, and having shiny bronzium buttons to draw the eye framing it on either side, well - I know it's where I look first at my Vargyr crewmates, who wear the same thing. Mostly, they're bigger down there.

So I was standing outside Doctor Courangara's quarters with a soother tablet melting on my tongue, sliding my cock around in my pants which, naturally, made the back seam rub across my hole. My thoughts were wandering back over what the doctor had implied regarding his "research", and I had momentarily forgotten that I was trying to tuck my erection into a less obvious position. So, in effect, I was just playing with myself when I noticed that I had an audience. Vargyr, nearly as big as my captain, and interested enough in what he was seeing to begin to poke out of his sheathe.

"Need a hand with that, Hali?" I blushed, as I finally looked up to see it was someone I knew - Arrvis, the dark-furred Vargyr from Orngg's work-crew. He was grinning faintly, showing just a hint of his teeth as he sauntered over. As he did, he casually brushed along the outline of his own sex under his uniform pants with a fingertip in a lazy gesture. He had caught me looking. Damn, I was looking again. I bit my lip, stammered a reply.

"Uh, just trying make adjustments," I explained. "These pants are a bit, uh, snug..." My tail curled and twitched between my thighs, and Arrvis reached to stroke along it with the same light touch, guided its tufted end up to brush against his bulge as he moved in close.

"I had noticed," said Arrvis, angling his hips so I could see his maleness thicken, sliding another inch from its sheathe. "Sometimes, if its too snug in front, you can get a little extra room in there by adjusting things in the back." Still teasing the tip of my tail against his stiffening sex with one hand, he slipped his other behind me to graze under the base of my tail with a fingertip. "Let me try?" Close to, his musky, male Vargyr scent rose around me. I nodded, then uttered a wordless sound as he stroked slowly down along my cleft. My hips arched involuntarily as his touch brushed across my ring.

"Yes, right along here," he said in a sly tone as he caressed my bud through the dry, slick fabric. I parted my thighs reflexively as my bottom rocked against his teasing hand. My own hands reached out to steady myself, and raked through the dense, rough fur of his flanks as I caught my breath. "Do you think it is helping, Hali?" asked Arrvis in a low tone, his muzzle warm against my ear as his fingertips grazed up my cleft and down again. I made an incoherent sound between a purr and a moan, and he chuckled. "Hm... maybe I had better just check."

My hands slid up the Vargyr's broad chest to clasp at the back of his neck as Arrvis began to tease my erection with the tip of my own tail, then ran one thumb along its length. His warm breath tickled my fur as he spoke with pretended concern. "Aw... it seems that didn't help at all, did it? Poor little pup. Do you think I should try again, Hali?" I made some small, urgent affirmative, and he chuckled softly, "Good boy."

Arrvis held me pinned between his hands, one playing all around my squirming bottom but centering his attentions on the seam under my tail while his other hand framed my throbbing cock in an easy grip so that I stroked myself against it as my hips bucked and arched. "You know what I think, Hali?" he murmured into my ear with a sensual hint of a growl. When I did not answer, he tapped one heavy fingertip against the back seam where it crossed my bud and prompted, "Well?"

"What do you, think, sir?" I asked. The honorific must have pleased Arrvis, because the big Vargyr nuzzled my ear and gave my captive sex a gentle squeeze as his other hand teased my ring slowly.

"I think that you like having your pants snug, Hali," he replied. "I think that you want them to be noticed by the crew, like Shipman Orngg, yesterday, hmm...? Like that work crew on E-Deck. I hear you put on quite a show." The suggestion was breathed into my ear, followed by a nip at my neck, just a hint of his teeth grazing there. "I think you like turning all of us Vargyr on with your naughty ways, Hali, with your Halivarri tail waving above your hungry little ass." My thighs parted further as he stroked more deliberately, and I let my seat press back against his touch.

I could feel a blush deepening across my face as Arrvis spoke, low against my neck, but I wasn't ashamed, because I could sense somehow that his teasing was an expression of approval, of admiration even. More, I could feel how aroused Arrvis had become while petting me, a response only fueled by my responsiveness. I could almost feel a current between us, electrifying our bodies, sharpening our appetites to a ravening hunger.

Meanwhile, as I grew more urgently aroused, I could catch my own aroma deepening around us - not as deep a musk as a Vargyr, but redolent of eager, adolescent rut. I tried to recall Doctor Courangara's explanation regarding pheromones, but all I could think of was the feel of his huge, silk-shod sex sliding under my bottom as I sat in his lap. In any case, it was hard to think past what Arrvis was saying in his low, intimate tones as he nuzzled all around my ear.

"Getting all boned up in your pants just from being on a ship full of Vargyr cock, isn't that so, Hali?" Arrvis continued to caress me lazily, the hand teasing my sex stroking up to graze and tweak my nipples, his hips sidling against me so I could feel his unsheathed member against me under taut fabric. "Hanging around in access-ways, stroking yourself, hoping a crewman will come along - yeah, I know you do. And I know why, Hali. Do you?" Arrvis' tongue darted around my ear, and the hand on my ass drew me tight against his hips. "Well, do you?" I gasped and managed to stammer a reply.

"Unh! My, uh, biological imperative...?" It came out more as a question.

"You've been talking to the Doctor, haven't you, Hali? Are you craving something bigger than a Vargyr, that you've started wagging your tail at a Rakashah?" I blushed and squirmed as he guessed so near the mark. "You sound so clinical, Hali. I'd put it another way." His hands slowed, drawing out each touch teasingly, making me arch and buck to stroke myself against him.

"How would you put it, sir?" I thought I knew what he was going to say, and I wanted to hear him say it.

"It is what you are made for, Hali. Oh, I am sure you have other talents," he allowed, heading off any objections I might have made if I weren't squirming against him, shivering with desire. "But I think you'll find that those are things you want to do, while this..." here he bucked his hips slowly, letting me feel the hot length of his cock against my trembling thigh, "...This is what you need. Isn't that right, Hali?"

The hand that had been teasing along my torso reached for my own, still clinging to the thick shag of mane at the back of his neck. Sensing his intent, I let him guide it down to rake the thatch of fur on his belly, and lower still. I measured his maleness by touch, exploring his proportions. He was big, bigger than Orngg, though not yet fully out of his sheathe, and thicker than my captain.

"That's a good pup," he said in his low, silken tones. "See what you do to us, Hali? The way you tease, the way you smell... The way you stare with those big, dark eyes. Oh, yes - I saw you looking. Practically licking your lips, panting for it, weren't you?"

I didn't say anything to counter his claims. Just at the moment, they were true enough. Arrvis noticed my blush, smiled, raised his hand to stroke my cheek, letting his thumb trail over my lips. The tip of my tongue darted out to moisten it.

Arrvis slid his thumb into my mouth, and I suckled it instinctually as he bucked his sex against my hand, still teasing under my tail. "So, tell me, Hali..." he said in his husky voice, nearly a growl. "Where to you like it best - in your pretty little mouth, or up your tight little ass?"

"Uh... um, I guess up my..." I started to reply, blushing fiercely. My back bumped against something, and I realized he'd been maneuvering me gradually toward a lift tube. The door hissed softly open behind me, and he bundled me into it, hit a button.

"Not that it really matters," he growled into my ear. "I'll let you do both. If I hadn't had that meeting last night, you know, we'd have filled you from both ends." I shivered at that. "Don't worry, we still will do that - and more, pup - oh, soon enough!" I could feel the heat build in him as he said so, and further as he went on: "But later. For now, we're going to make up for time we lost last night - just you and me."

The lift hummed and, gradually, gravity lightened and began to pull in a new direction. Arrvis steadied me by the simple expedient of holding my shivering body against his own, helping me find my footing on what had been an angled section of wall as the lift came to a halt, and a different panel opened before us onto a dim space beyond.

I could only see a comform seat, somewhere between a chair and an acceleration couch, poised among faintly blinking controls in front of a wide, bayed viewport showing some kind of prominent assembly on the far side, backlit by the streaming star-trails of jumpspace. I realized this was a gunnery station while Arrvis was persuading the lift that it was under maintenance, and then he was moving for the gunner's seat through the half-gravity, and drawing me along after him.

"That should assure our privacy, least until the end of next watch," he said as he returned his attention to me. "So we can take our time." He smiled wolfishly, and my cock twitched. "Let's get these out of the way..." With that, he began to unfasten the tabs that held the straining panel of my shipman's pants in place while I just as eagerly fumbled with his.

"Should we even be in here?" I asked with a short gasp as, bare now between my thighs, Arrvis stroked along my exposed parts as he settled himself in the comform seat.

"Well, no," he replied. "But as long as we are in jumpspace, the guns won't be needed, and it was the closest place I could think of to get you alone. Now, turn around and come here."

He turned me so I faced away from him, then lifted me easily in his arms to straddle his chest. I had managed to unfasten the panel of his pants at the front and was staring at his fully erect sex arching urgently up at me as his heavy paw found the nape of my neck. I needed little encouragement to lean forward to stroke his length against my cheek, drinking in the rich scent of the coarse fur around the base of his sex as I nuzzled slowly.

"Better get that plenty wet, Hali..." he said as he lifted my legs over his shoulders, parting my thighs. "Because you know where it's going, don't you, pup?" I could feel his breath, warm against my naked fur, then gasped as his cold nose nudged beneath my tail. "Right ...here." Then his warm, rough tongue plying along the vale of my ass to circle my shivering bud.

"Unh! Yessir!" I gasped, and made a slow survey of his thick, Vargyr cock with parted lips, my tongue darting and flicking in time to his own where it teased my tight ring. I was drunk on the heavy, musky male scent of his sex, and shuddered as I found I was aware of how I smelled to him, freed from my pants after a prolonged and torturous confinement. Boyish, ruttish, yearning to be mated, my scent mingled with his - dominant, demanding, intent on a target already surrendered and yielding to his pliant, plundering tongue.

Arrvis paused to loosen my tail where it had wrapped around his neck to hold his muzzle snug between my spread cheeks. "Just can't wait to get this sweet little tail hole filled, can you, pup?" My parted lips slicked his cock from crown to root with his own dew as I nuzzled under to suckle at the swell of his throbbing knot in reply.

"Oh, good pup!" he said in a muffled bark, buried his wet nose in my dank under-tail, and came. His cock pulsed under my lips and I felt the soft slap of his jetting seed strike my cheek in drops and streaks.

* * *

Meanwhile, as I would later learn, a console light at a crew station on the bridge had changed from steady green to blinking amber.

"Captain, security alert from turret seventeen," said the subaltern in a level tone that belied any surprise.

"Do we have AV surveillance of that weapon station, lieutenant?" asked Captain Fangg after a measured pause.

"Aye, captain," said the subaltern, Rrnoldt.

Another pause. "On screen."

"Aye, Captain."

* * *

Across the ship, some dozen view-screens, from Engineering to the E-deck aft urinal, flicked on to show Arrvis muscle me into the gunnery station, fondle my bare privates, poise me over him in the gunner's seat.

Crewmen nudged each other and fell silent save for occasional moans or gasps of awe. Hands, black with engine grease, tugged restlessly at trouser-panels grown abruptly snug as they watched me worship hard Vargyr cock with my mouth, squirm back against the hot muzzle that burrowed under my tail.

In the shuttle-bay, arc-plasma flickered and dimmed as welders lifted their reflec visors to look from the big, overhead screen to Crewman Orngg who nodded once, standing a little taller, chest out, one hand framing the swell in his pants as he smiled to himself.

On E-deck, young Yrvnng watched from his hands and knees through glittering yellow streams, muzzle deep in rank, lupine crotch as a rough hand pushed his tail aside and lifted his hips.

On D-deck, above, Officer Murchar glowered at the screen, eyed his security detail and nodded toward a lift tube. The crewmen on duty thumbed the chromed knobs of their stun-batons, grinned wolfishly and moved out.

In the medical bay, Doctor Courangara excused himself to the clinician, irised open the door to his own quarters, passed through to sprinkle a pinch of dreamgrass onto a glowing brazier, sit on a low cushion with his legs folded beneath him, and close his eyes.

* * *

On the control console of turret seventeen, a high-resolution, motion-activated surveillance camera tracked our every movement as Arrvis lifted me up and turned me to face him. My legs hooked over his elbows, he lifted my seat, guiding my hips to grind his still-aroused cock along my cleft as he lapped his semen from my cheek and found my panting mouth with his own.

As I sucked his seed from his tongue, tasting his rising passion in the scent of my own rut, I squirmed and arched my rear until I felt my shivering bud snare the wet tip of his sex, then forced myself back, inch by thickening inch, onto his big Vargyr cock. He gave one testing thrust of his knot against my stretched ring, and I began to come.

I came in glittering ribbons across my belly and chest, the smell moistly mingling with the sodden scent of sex heavy in the air around us as my passage shivered and contracted around the restless intruder. Arrvis thrust slowly in my clenching, velvet grip, panting against my ear, murmuring low as he nudged again with his knot at my ring.

"This is what you want, isn't it, Hali?" He drew his hips back until I whimpered, then thrust roughly in again until sticky fur bristled at my tail hole, the crown of his cock bluntly butting a spot deep inside me, making my cock pulse and jet another streamer of seed. "Yeah, show me how much you want it, pup. Come for me." I pressed to meet his knot, and he drew back again slowly.

"Poor little slut-puppy needs a good fucking, doesn't he?" Another shove of his cock, another small fountain from mine, another tight clutch as he rammed my prostate, another squirm of my hips trying to force his knot into me. He chuckled knowingly and drew back once more. "Get used to needing it, pup. It's what you're for, isn't it, Hali?" Ramming in again, teasing with his knot. "Tell me, Hali..." he panted into my ear, fingers tracing snail trails of my own sap over my fur, thumbing my nipples. "Tell me what you need."

"The knot, sir... Please?" I gasped, as my passage trembled and tightened to grip his hard maleness as another shuddering wave overcame me. My next shot hit my face, and my tongue flicked out to taste it on my lips. Arrvis growled, pulled back slowly until again I whimpered and squirmed.

"Oh, I don't know, pup..." he murmured, tongue flicking around my ear. "Doesn't sound like you really mean it." His powerful hips thrust forwards again, slowly. I moaned and pressed back, panting as my climax receded but still powerfully aroused.

"Please," I panted, "...please fuck me sir. I need it. I need your big, Vargyr knot!" I was nearly crying now, and blushing again as I heard myself begging him, meaning every word.

"Good boy," he crooned. "I am glad you can tell me what you need." The words spoken to my ear as adroitly arousing as his languorous thrusts. "Now tell me why you need it, Hali..." He bent to lick a drop of my seed from a nipple, as I squirmed against the knot at my ring before he withdrew it once more.

"Because I'm a naughty Halivarri, sir..." I said, blushing. "A little tease who needs to be fucked." He thrust in again, slowly, rocking his hips to nudge my prostate deliberately.

"So you are a slut, pup?" Teasing with the knot that would lock his thick sex inside me, Arrvis ground against my ass until I pressed back to scour my stretched ring with the coarse fur that covered it.

"Ulp!" I gasped. "Yes, sir. I am slut-boy for hard Vargyr cock." He let me squirm against his knot, lapping cum from my fur, my face. The air was heavy with the scents of semen and sweat, deep , male, Vargyr musk and ass-fucked adolescent rut.

"Orngg told me you're a snug fit. I guess I could just shove it in and take you, but how about you show me you want my knot. Fuck your little ass right back on it." He arched his hips, holding steady as I tested my ring against his throbbing knob. "Hear tell you get so hot for Vargyr knot, you can't sit still 'til it's in you, and then you can't sit still either. Squirming and squeezing, clutching tight when you come. Kept Orngg so hard you were late for the Captain's table before he could pull out."

He let me take my time, breathing slowly, stretching myself over the thick swell near the base of his proud Vargyr sex, restless hands stroking me, rubbing my previous load into my fur, over my parted lips. I lapped at his slickened thumb as I worked myself gradually onto the massive intruder.

"And just like you, Hali, to turn up to serve your Captain - your own bond-mate - rumpled and panting, reeking of sex, knowing he could smell it on you, knowing how he'd need to prove your place. And he did, didn't he, Hali." He braces his heavy hands on my shoulders, pulling me down.

"Yes, sir... Ulp!" With this assistance I finally forced myself back onto him, my ring closing around the shaggy root of his sex. I yelped, Arrvis growled and closed his teeth - gently - over the back of my neck. I could tell that in spite of his teasing tone, Arrvis wanted this as badly as I did. His need was as plain as his scent, and I could feel how each moment with me was sharpening it for him. It would have been agonizing if he were not so certain that I would let him take me, and that it was his manifest right.

There were no words for this - just raw instinct, rising from our deepest natures to confront us with our mutual need. I felt it intuitively, emotively. Later, I'd talk it out with Doctor Courangara, only then finding words. For the moment, it was enough that we both knew, with his cock sunk deep inside me, and me squirming and shivering in his lap, as he thrust the short distance allowed by his knot to ram my secret inner core until once more I tensed and shuddered, moaned and came.

My feet kicked out, met something solid, pushed it away. There was a loud pop and sizzle of discharged capacitors as the cannons fired, the chair rumbled beneath us, lit by the glare of lasers pulsing into the void, falling behind us to be lost in the myriad star-streams of jumpspace.

* * *

Elsewhere on the ship, I am told many of the crew applauded. On the bridge, no one dared.

"A security team is responding to the, ah, incident, Captain," said Rrnoldt, the subaltern, breaking the long silence.

"Tell them to wait outside. It may be some time before we can separate them," said the Captain, with the ghost of a smile. "Continue with AV surveillance. Archive the footage - and restricted access, or no one will get anything done."

"Aye, sir," said the lieutenant, sending the command to the security team closing now on turret seventeen. Then, in a deferential aside, "You are a lucky one, Captain."

"Yes," said Captain Fangg with a slow, predatory grin. "Yes, I am."

* * *

Afterwards, I lay with Arrvis for a while in the languor that follows the exhaustion of desire. He had tilted the conform gunner's seat back and sprawled out, my head resting on his upper thighs, so that he could nose around my still-bare privates drinking in my scent at his leisure. I spread my thighs, nuzzling sleepily, still bewitched by his heady male scent, brushing my cheek and lips along the damp, tangled fur of his thick sheathe.

We lay that way for a timeless while. Then, of course, the security detail overrode the lock on the lift, separated us gently but firmly, put us both in restraints, and led us off to the brig. The squad leader smiled knowingly, and slapped a blunt, rubber truncheon in his palm. I shivered, and he grinned.